The Way Out (8 page)

I continued to fail my way up the street, becoming more abject the further I got until I was knocking on doors only to apologise before slinking back off down the drive. I couldn't do it. What right did I have to introduce fear into these people's lives? I decided I'd finish the rest of the street, but whether I got a referral or not, I wouldn't be doing this again. I'd find another way to make the rent.

Then there was this one house.

It was the last one on the street and the door was open, just a crack. I knocked and it swung inwards until the handle bumped on the inside wall, leaving the house wide open. I couldn't leave it like that so I stepped inside, balancing on one foot, trying to grab the handle without setting my other foot down. That way I wasn't really inside, wasn't crossing their threshold, not all of me. But then, without knowing quite how it happened, I was.

‘Hello?' I called out, but the house was quiet. Not a dead silence, more tranquil than empty. I continued along the hall: solid wood floors, a gilt-framed mirror, a shoe rack crammed with a jumble of trainers and boots. My heels sank into the soft pile of the patterned rug. I called again, projecting my voice up the stairs. ‘Hello-oh? Anyone home?' I'd already decided that I wouldn't attempt to deliver my pitch although, in some ways, it was a tailor-made opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of greater home security. I could've been anyone.

Still no answer.

I peered into the first room. Comfy looking sofas, walls lined with bookshelves, an upright piano in the corner. Two empty wine glasses together on the coffee table, dregs pooled into red dots.

There were photographs, professional studio shots of a couple and one child, a little boy, posed on an entirely white background, a safe well-lit place where nothing but their happiness could exist and no other realities could intrude.

I looked at the spines of the books. Mostly fiction, some good stuff, some trash, bulky hardbacks on architecture and gardening. A ladies' watch lay on the shelf, thin gold strap, small oval face. I picked it up and listened to it tick with calm precision. Time seemed to pass slightly slower and in a more orderly fashion for the owner of this watch than it did for me. Each of her seconds was measured and delivered to plan, forming an unbroken chain of identical seconds stretching in
both directions without interruption or flaw. Perfect.

I could take this watch. The thought made my pulse skip and speed up. It'd be worth a bit. I could sell it. I glanced around the room, trying to think like a burglar. What else would I take?

My eyes rested again on the family photos. The man had his arm around the woman's shoulders and was leaning in towards her. She sat with her hands in her lap, not even trying. Not having to. The boy, he looked about six, was dangling around the man's neck like a monkey, grinning. One child. All the care and attention this couple had to offer lavished on this one lucky kid. Would they take something from him by giving him so much love and security? Perhaps he would grow with a sense of entitlement that robbed his own achievements of meaning. Or maybe it would all be peachy perfect. Could it ever be?

The peaceful atmosphere of the house was making me sleepy. I hadn't slept properly for weeks. The leather sofa looked too soft, too enveloping. The dining chairs had tall wooden backs and hessian covered bases and looked deliberately uncomfortable. I sat in an old armchair. And it was just right. Supportive, yielding, but not too much. Perhaps this was how a good man should be. Perhaps this was the way the man in the photographs was.

I could take the watch. I wasn't going to get anywhere with the referral business so perhaps I deserved to come out of today with something in my pocket. What would it be to the woman that lived here but a minor inconvenience?

But I couldn't. This fact annoyed me. I should've been able to. I should've been harder. What good were morals doing me exactly? Couldn't eat them. Couldn't burn them and warm my hands on the glow.

I put the watch back on the shelf and left the sitting room. I should've left the house altogether.

In the kitchen, glass bottles of different shapes and colours were arranged along the windowsill. The sun shone through them scattering patches of coloured light around the room, like pieces of a luminous jigsaw. Recipe books were bookended by herbs growing in terracotta pots.

There was a knife block in blonde wood, with protruding handles of brushed satiny metal. I drew one out. The metal was cool and silky against my palm. The bright sunlight, which danced with such sparkling enthusiasm over every reflective surface in the room, seemed to stop short of the knife. It pulled in close, drawn magnetically, but then hovered uncertainly a hair's breadth above the surface of the blade in a languid rippling movement, without making contact. The knife, although I held it firmly in my hand, was somehow unreachable, submerged in some other reality. I pressed the flat edge of the blade against the pad of my thumb. The skin bulged slightly. A slender white margin appeared between the metal and the raised whorls of my thumbprint. I pressed harder and the contrast between thumb, pressure-line and metal became more pronounced. Within the white border region, the spiralling ridges of identity became invisible. I pressed harder still. I don't know what I was hoping for but I felt sure there was some kind of answer to be had there.

When the pressure released, it did so with a sudden spray of blood that seemed to leap from my hand as though it had been straining to escape all along. There was so much of it so quickly, I could taste the dark, salty tang of it in the air. The knife clattered to the floor and the sudden noise focussed my attention back on where I was. In someone else's kitchen. Bleeding all over it.

I tucked my thumb into my fist but heavy beads still leaked through my fingers and splashed onto the worktop, the floor, down the fronts of the units. I grabbed a dishcloth and bound
one end tightly around my thumb until I could feel my pulse beating within the cloth, then wrapped the rest around thumb and fist together.

It took me a moment to realise that the high-pitched wailing now filling the room was not coming from me.

‘Come on, you. Let's get you cleaned up.' A female voice from the hall, raised above the gulping sobs of a child. The front door slammed. Perhaps it was only because I didn't move a single muscle, did not even blink, that they both passed by the kitchen without looking in. I recognised the woman from the photographs. I didn't get a good look at the child but the muddy, tear-streaked boy must have been her son. They carried on upstairs, the child's sobs subsiding into whimpers, the woman's voice a steady stream of reassurance.

The kitchen looked like the scene of some horrible crime. I left. I had to.

Derek and Joe were both sitting on the bonnet, smoking and talking. I heard Derek laugh his machine laugh. I stuffed my hand, dishcloth and all into my pocket.

‘Here she is!' he called out as I approached. He rubbed his hands together and reached out for my clipboard.

Surprised to find that I did indeed have it, clasped in my free hand, I gave it over and watched him rifle through the unmarked referral forms.

‘You're supposed to bring the signed copies back to me,' he said, frowning.

‘I didn't get any.'

‘What?' Derek exhaled noisily through his nose. ‘Not a single one? Really?'

‘Sorry. I don't think I'm much good at this,' I mumbled.

‘Well, that's that then. Sorry, sweetheart, we don't do second
chances. I'll give you a lift back into town.'

I stood there staring at him, dazed.

Derek gestured impatiently for me to get in the car. ‘Come on. Take it or leave it.'

Back home, I drop my keys onto the table. The noise is immediately swallowed by the hungry silence. It prowls towards me –
is that all you've got?
For what feels like a long time, we circle each other, weighing up strengths and weaknesses, unsure who will win if it comes to a fight.

It's not what they take…

The dishcloth wrapped around my left hand is soaked all the way through and inside it's pulsing heavily as if I'm holding my own heart clenched in my fist.

The tension is finally shattered by the smallest of sounds.

A key in a lock.

10 Types of Mustard

The mustard is the worst part. Having to wear this Victorian chambermaid pinafore and not getting to sit down for hours – those things are fairly shit. But the mustard is the worst.

My heart always takes a dip when one of my tables orders steak. The mustard tray is silver-plated. So are the ten little pots and the ten little spoons. The whole lot must weigh about a stone and it has to be held one-handed because the other is needed to spoon out gobs of gunk next to the steaks. I can't put the tray down on the table because there isn't enough room and anyway, it's not allowed. I stand with the tray balanced on my arm, fingers curled upwards gripping the opposite edge to keep it all steady. It has to be held low, so the customers get a good view inside the pots. The longer they look, the heavier the tray feels. It's like their looking collects inside the pots, fills them up with something heavier than mustard.

Table five is taking the piss. I've been standing here for five minutes and my bicep is rigid and burning. The guy's steak leaks a thin pink fluid. His girlfriend's lipsticked mouth is losing the shape of a smile.

‘And what's that one again?'

‘Black mustard seeds you say? How intriguing.'

‘Amanda, you simply must try the Bavarian!'

He knows what he's doing and he knows that I know. I see his type in here a lot. They're not here to enjoy the food for its own sake. They'd turn their noses up at the exact same dinner if just anyone could afford it. What they're savouring is the taste
of their own money. But for some, that's not enough. They want a little side order of toying with the waitress to really bring out the flavour.

He's faking a connoisseur's interest. Enquiring into each mustard's finer points, licking his lips, smiling slyly at his companion as he asks me to talk him through it one more time. Amanda avoids his glance. He's trying to impress her but he's failing. One of the perks of this job, possibly the only one, is that I've become adept at reading body language. Amanda clearly thinks he's a dick. He doesn't realise this yet.

This secret knowledge gives me a glowing nugget of power. I swallow it down and, instantly, it spreads its warmth out and soothes the ache in my arm. Let him have his fun. That lipsticked mouth will not be going where he'd like it to go tonight. It'll be pecking him politely on the cheek at best.

Deep breath. Smile. From the top. There's – English, Dijon, Course French with black mustard seeds, Honey, Wholegrain, Arran with single malt, Irish wholegrain with Guinness, with Drambuie, Bavarian sweetened with applesauce, and Apricot with Ginger.

‘Marvellous!' He leans forward nostrils twitching, waggles a finger over the tray and eventually settles on one. ‘Wholegrain with honey?' he says, deliberately getting it wrong. Again.

The way Amanda sits back in her chair, repositions her napkin, still avoiding eye contact. She's distancing herself from him. She meets my eye for a fraction of a second then looks down to her lap again.

Sorry. I know he's a dick
.

‘That's the Irish Wholegrain, sir. With Guinness,' I explain. I give Amanda a raised eyebrow.
What are you doing with him then?

She sighs and brushes invisible crumbs from the dark blue
silk of her skirt.
It's complicated
.

I flick a look towards the bottle of wine nestled in a bucket of ice on their table. It costs more than I'll earn in a week. I give her both eyebrows.
Yeah, I see that
.

‘Splendid! Yes, I'll have a little smidge of that. And… Let me see…' He goes back to eeny meeny as I drop a yellow-brown speckled spot of the Irish next to his Sirloin.

Amanda huffily repositions her cutlery.
It's not like that
.

We both know she's not with him for his looks – thick-set and jowly, with a dirty blonde beginner's comb-over. It's not his personality, since his status as a dick has already been established. I glance at Amanda.
So?

She examines her nail polish, gives an infinitesimal shrug and a wry twist of the lips.
Got pissed and slept with him by mistake
.

He dips his pinkie into the Irish and sucks it off, with fat little grunts of pleasure. Amanda's upper lip twitches.
Can't believe it myself
.

I let the little spoon drop back into its pot with a squelch.

Amanda closes her eyes and shudders faintly.
I'm not proud of it. But, he was so pathetically grateful. It would've been cruel to dump him straight away
.

‘This one. Drambuie, did you say?'

I look at him, trying not to picture him all naked and needy. ‘Well done, sir. Not many people have such a good memory.' I dole out a little splotch of the Honey mustard he's pointing at. He won't know the difference.

Amanda's gaze wanders around the room and settles on the wall clock. Her shoulders sink a little.
Only eight o'clock?
She twists her wrist to double check the time on her watch. An impatient sigh escapes. Her fingers tap a tiny drum roll on the tablecloth before she puts her hands in her lap and holds them there.
I'll wait until nine. Then I'll let him down gently
.

‘Lovely!' He rubs his hands together and attempts a matey wink. ‘I think that's all for now.'

I think so too. An inner warmth fills me to my fingertips and my arm feels good as new. ‘Enjoy your meal,' I chirp, and head back to the kitchen.

White Pudding Supper

It's been mad in here today. I've not even had time to stop for anything to eat myself. I don't really mind though. Breathing in the smell of chips all day, it puts me right off. But see when you're hungry enough, there's something in that hot fat smell that gets right down your neck, just wraps itself round your guts and tugs. Same for anyone. If you leave it long enough, the hunger just takes over. But I missed lunch as well and I can get a bit nippy when I'm hungry, which is not the best idea for the evening shift ahead.